New laboratory instruments help Customs get at unknown substances, from narcotics to food ingredients
New laboratory instruments offer the Customs Laboratory more precision in identifying foreign substances. Similar instruments have been in use in other EU countries, but so far not at Finnish Customs.
Customs has acquired two new instruments for the Customs Laboratory to use in identifying unknown substances in foods and as part of suspected customs offences. The NMR and NGS instruments were obtained for Customs thanks to the Laboratory’s project Securing Europe, Improving Finnish Customs Laboratory. The project falls under the Customs Control Equipment Instrument (CCEI) of the European Union.
“With the help of the new instruments, we can analyse and identify new illegal substances and cases of food fraud. They help us improve the reliability of our analyses when examining illegally imported goods,” says Senior Customs Officer Ilmari Szilvay from the Customs Laboratory.
The total price of the instruments was about 820 000 euros, of which 80 per cent was funded by the EU’s Customs Control Equipment Instrument (CCEI). The CCEI’s Customs Laboratory project started in autumn 2022 and will end in August 2025.
An NMR spectroscopy instrument helps Customs get on the trail of illegal imports
With a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer, you can find out the chemical structure of unknown substances and determine substance concentrations. The instrument is used in examinations relating to illegal imports and suspected customs offences.
“The NMR technology is needed especially for criminal investigations involving previously unknown substances or cases where it is important to determine the concentration of substances and the purity of a sample. What is helpful with NMR technology is that you don’t need reference materials for the examined substances,” says Harri Heikkinen, Customs Chemist.
NMR spectrometers are also used by the customs administrations of other EU countries.
“So far, we’ve been ordering NMR analyses from other cooperating laboratories in the EU. As we now have our own instrument, we can find out the structure of a new substance more quickly than before, and thus more quickly gain an overall picture of the geographical spread of the substance in Finland in cases where certain new designer drugs are beginning to crop up on the illegal market,” says Heikkinen.
An NGS instrument detects an almost endless number of food ingredients
A Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) instrument for DNA sequencing is used to test for, among other things, food fraud; that is, whether the content of a food product matches the information given on the product’s label. The instrument is also used to identify species of animals, plants and microbes in the ingredients, as well as genetically modified ingredients. Similar instruments are also used in the customs laboratories of several other EU countries.
“With the methods we previously had at our disposal, we could only identify a small number of different plant and animal species, but with the new instrument, the number of identifiable species is almost endless,” says Anu Kallinen, Head of Section at the Customs Laboratory.
The NGS instrument increases the number of analysis methods available when testing for food fraud. The aim is that consumers can trust the authenticity and safety of imported foods.
“For instance, new mutation techniques have been used in the genetic modification of foods in recent years, and we have not been able to examine these with the methods previously available to us,” says Kallinen.
Finnish Customs obtained the new instruments thanks to CCEI funding
The specific objective of the funding instrument CCEI (Customs Control Equipment Instrument) is to harmonise the customs control equipment and methods used within the EU. This objective is met in practice by purchasing, maintaining and upgrading reliable, state-of-the-art customs control equipment.
The aim of the CCEI is also to strengthen security in the EU and its member states, to facilitate legitimate business activity and to protect the financial interest of the EU from unfair and illegal trade.
